Inside the Developers Studio: Follow-up; Cory Barlog

What’s up PlayStation fans??? I know my earlier post was a bit thin…thin like one of the Olsen twins…so I thought I would come back and add some more of what you’re asking for. I love your passion and drive for God of War: Chains of Olympus info, so I’ll do my best to accommodate you with this follow-up. I’m going to share a little bit more about God of War and maybe talk about what’s next on my plate, or I might just announce the rumble feature for the PSP.

Ok, just kidding about the rumble feature for PSP, I made that up.

It’s pretty strange posting something in these new digs though, it’s more formal than my ghetto little blog. I feel like I need to sit up straight when I’m writing this. I’m not going to of course, I just feel like I should. So I guess I will just have the guilt to carry around with me all day. Fortunately I am too shallow to be bummed about that for too long.

All right, enough already, let’s chat a bit about the PSP. I hear that the official news about unlocking the PSP processor speed is out there. Many people are asking if God of War: Chains of Olympus is going to take advantage of this. The short answer is yes we are! Ready at Dawn has been doing some pretty amazing stuff with the PSP since the early days of the platform. Every time I see a new build I am more amazed with what we’re able to pull off with the PSP. I mean, 1080p on the PSP…who would have freaking thought??? Ok so that is wholly untrue, but it does look amazing. I feel confident in saying that we (and when I say we, I mean Ready at Dawn since they are doing the bulk of the work) are nailing the look and feel of God of War for the PSP. If everything goes according to plan then this will be a must-have game in your PSP library.

The combat for God of War: Chains of Olympus is also coming along really nicely. With each new build I get to see more and more of the game taking shape, which from my perspective is great. This game is really a first for me overseeing a game in this fashion. I don’t live with the game every day in the trenches like I did on the first two God of War games. So, all the daily stress that goes with directing this title gets placed squarely on Ru Weerasuriya’s shoulders. To be honest, I don’t like this position nearly as much as directing a game. I prefer being in the trenches and tackling all the problems. Thankfully the folks over at Ready at Dawn are doing a great job and over the next few weeks you will get to see the fruits of their labor. I would say ‘our’ labor, but including myself in that would be like the guy who stands on the side of the road during a marathon and hands out a glass of water and says “run faster”, and then says ‘we’ won the race.

I hope to have more info on the game sometime soon, keep your eyes open at E3. I’ll let you know when we’re finished. I think the first people getting one will be the people who participated in the Island of Rhodes website tease.

I will try and stop by as often as I can and give some more PSP updates for everybody, without giving away too much of course. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, and we’re all looking forward to those reactions from E3.

I cannot wait for this game. Awesome, Awesome post…I love this blog! Not only are you adding to an unreal story with the God Of War franchise, you are doing it on the PSP which is awesome! The PSP might finally begin to get some of the respect that it truly deserves!

Thanks Cory. A note to everyone, the goal of this series as noted in that Friday entry, wasn’t to give the full down and dirty on every game (that is what things like E3 are for), but to give some flavor behind E3 and how these developers approach, prepare and feel about it. The other developers participating in the series are all going to answer the same questions Cory answered earlier today, give or take a few.

So I hope you’ll find it as a fun look at the show and see what makes some of the industry’s best developers tick. I’m sure you’ll want more, but keep in mind this entry from Cory is a great bonus and probably not everyone else will be jumping in like this. Thanks again Cory.

Sony you guys have really out done yourselves. People reacted to your original post and in a matter of minutes you gave the people what they wanted. If this isn’t proof that Sony stands behinds their customers and is willing to go above and beyond then I don’t know what is.

I absolutely love this blog and hope you guys keep the momentum. Now all I ask is you guys “televise” your E3 events via the Playstation Network, so us PS3 owners can view the entire event as it goes down.

Cory, it’s always rough for the first guy to climb up out of the trench and charge across the field…

There is a desperate need for real technical information about the PS3, hardware, tools, and development. So far the vast majority of information about the PS3 comes from x86 PC game sites, PC developers crying over the fact that they don’t know how to write an engine for any other platform than the desktop PC, PC developers crying that their DirectX code they’ve amassed over the years is useless on the PS3, PC gamers filling in the lack of real technical information from Sony with absolute garbage.

Perhaps Sony feels that by the time the big titles like Lair, Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank hit the shelves they won’t have to worry about the vast amount of PS3 misinformation that fills the Net.

The PC and Xbox world has very successfully painted the PS3 as a system where console developers are sitting around struggling to grasp this crazy piece of hardware due to Sony’s inexplicable silence on the details of the PS3 hardware.

Sony really needs to have real console developers talk about:

* The actual RSX details
* RSX and 1080p, fillrate, etc.
* The structure of a native PS3 engine
* The division of labor between Cell and RSX and how they are designed to operate together
* Why a PC developer who dumps their engine entirely onto the PPE and treats the RSX like a desktop PC graphics card will get a game that runs roughly with the similar performance as a 360 game

Sony has two choices:

1) Let their competitors define their hardware for them – poorly and with malice
2) Wake up and decide what their silence is actually accomplishing and start letting people know what an amazing machine they have developed is capable of.

I was the Animation director on god of War 1 and the Game Director on God of War 2.

How was it working with the Jaffe? It was good…I learned so much from watching how Dave worked on God of War 1. It really gave me a good base to figure out how the h#ll to do this job. He is a crazy guy, as you all know from his many interviews and blog posts. I have come to understand that you kind of have to be kind of crazy to direct a game like this. It takes so much out of you to do this big games.

Also just a thanks to everyone for stopping by and giving these posts a read. We are pretty stoked about Chains of Olympus and I know I personally can’t wait until you all have a chance to get your hands on it and stab some Minotaurs!!

I hope everyone realizes not every developer is going to be able to take the extra time out like Cory did… ah, never mind.

Welcome to blogging Sony. Sorry. I’ll try not to go overboard.

Hey, if I can be totally random here, what’s the chance of the PS3 removing region coding for ps1/ps2 games in the future? I was very happy to hear that PS3 and PSP games are not region locked, but all I really want is to be able to play the Sakura Taisen 1 remake for the ps2.

Well, a Sakura Taisen 1 (or 3) remake for the PS3 would be nice too, but that’s Sega’s problem. /random

The PSP still amazes me, those screenshots look better than a lot of ps2 games. It really is an incredible little machine, I look forward to increased support from Sony.

Man I love games like GOW, I had bought the first one on day and it was awsome, I thougt that it, thats the best the PS2 kan do. Than you came up with GOW2, and I was really amazed. i play those two games sometimes on my PS3 . Now a GOW that runs on the PSP ans it lookes amazing…Kudos for Ready at Down.

LongTimePlaystationDev number 10 you are right. But one the other hand devs who worked on the PS2 know a bit of programming to several cores, the PS2 had vector units, they are a bit like the SPE’s on the PS3.

The PS2 was a [DELETED] to program for, but look at the games they are pushing out of the PS2 hardware now…..Give the PS3 some time and whe will see amazing stuff……

Nice! I can wait for this title to be release. I really hope you guys post some quicktime movie clips about E3. I wanna be blown away with shocking surprises. Make the world a believer of that $600.00 price tag.

Yay PSP demo! wait … I signed up for the Demo … but I didn’t get a confirmation … maybe because I’m in Canada … oh well :P

Just mean its going to be a longueur wait for me to play it … but man .. does it look good! Its probably going to be the first game on PSP that will make it worth it since I got a PSP … at launch!

bad ports and FPS’s on the system just don’t work right. Man .. thank god GOW came out … it brought fun on the PS2 twice! … its gonna bring meaning to the PSP as a game hand held, and in the future, I hope it’ll bring good things to the PS3 :P

Great work, the game looks fantastic, and im sure will play just as good.

P.S. i just thought of a cool idea. since this blog looks to be getting good reviews and alot of ppl are enjoying getting all the news , why not have a section in the ps3 XMB for the official sony blog. what do you guys think?

Great Post! Thanks for the follow up Cory, especially after of all the idiotic posts left after your last interview. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you decided not to come back for more of that garbage.

Keep up the outstanding work. Its comforting to know the GoW franchise is in such good hands.

wow Cory, you really didnt have to do this. but i am glad you did. this blog is really shaping up to be the only way i can get REAL PS3 news, even though you guys arn’t willing to give up any secrets ;) nice job with the blog, hope you guys keep posting!

This is a good follow-up to the first post, however I don’t see why everyone got so heated. Wait till E3 everyone, you don’t want them to spoil all the surprises.
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Although I would like to know if the Killzone E3 event on July 10th is all about Killzone, because it is 2.5 hours long, that is longer then the Sony press conference, pretty crazy!